The Eight Kings


The Eight Kings is a fantasy role-playing game adventure module.

Plot summary

The Eight Kings is a scenario for character levels 9-12, fourth and last in the "Maze of Zayene" series, the sequel to Tower Chaos. The heroes discover there are actually eight King Orrs, all created and re-created by the Zayene.

Publication history

The Eight Kings was written by Robert Kuntz, and was published by Creations Unlimited, Inc., in 1987 as a 32-page book.
This adventure was part of the Maze of Zayene series, a linked set of four adventures set in the World of Kalibruhn; work on them started in 1986, and they were all published in 1987. Prisoners of the Maze and Dimensions of Flight were based on adventures that Kuntz had created at college and that had subsequently been run at EastCon in 1983.
When Kuntz partnered with Necromancer Games years later, he was thinking about his unpublished City of Brass but decided it would be easier to begin the Maze of Zayene. However, there was a several-month delay between the publication of the first and second Zayene adventures. While the first three Maze of Zayene adventures came out in 2001, the fourth and final book ultimately had to be published by Different Worlds in 2004.

Reception

According to Shannon Appelcline, although the adventures of the Maze of Zayene series "were unforgiving 'gauntlets' of the type that Kuntz enjoyed, they were somewhat unusual for the time because they had a political veneer laid out upon them – centring on a plot to assassinate a king. They also feature the evil wizard Zayene, who Kuntz intended to be a recurring villain, constantly returning to bedevil players."